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Marine Staff Sgt. Charles Peworski, BSN (pictured above), responded to a high-speed crash in the Iraqi desert last year. As a civilian, he works as an RN house nursing supervisor at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix.

Nurses never know when they’ll be called upon during off hours to use their knowledge to save a stranger or loved one. NurseWeek/Nursing Spectrum and the American Red Cross are honoring 10 nurses who came to the aid of others. A special ceremony Dec. 3 in Washington celebrated these heroes.

Coming together in tragedy

Debra Watkins, RN, MSN, was driving to work at 7 AM when two trucks on the bridge ahead of her collided head-on. She pulled over, leaped out, and noting that one truck’s driver seemed fine, dashed to the truck that was burning. The driver was talking, but the female passenger, crammed under the dash, wasn’t breathing and had sustained severe trauma. “She had no heart rhythm, but was bleeding profusely, filling her oral and nasal cavities,” Watkins says. “We had to get her out to get him out. Two male volunteers were so trusting, doing anything I asked. The truck was blowing up little by little, so another man kept telling me it was the tires or whatever else exploded.”

Watkins kept clearing blood from the airway, and a bystander tossed her a mask when she began breathing for the victim. A student nurse arrived and assisted with CPR after the victim’s pulse was lost. After both victims were out and the truck was engulfed in flames, rescue crews arrived. The woman was intubated and transported by Care Flight, the flames were extinguished, and the news cameras rolled. Watkins told the student nurse to go on TV so her professors would know she had a legitimate excuse for missing school. She herself called work to say she’d be late, went home, changed her clothes, and went to work.

Watkins trained as a paramedic and ran emergency squads for a year before joining the Dayton (Ohio) VA Medical Center 19 years ago, where she works as nurse manager of the ICU and ACU. “I never forgot those [emergency] skills, and they got me in the ICU,” she says. “I still work the floor as much as possible to keep my skills up and in touch with reality.”

Nobody would have known what she did, but when the police decided to issue awards to the rescuers, they asked the VA which nurse was late that day.

The female passenger is recovering from serious neurological damage, and “it was hard to accept recognition at the expense of someone’s trauma,” Watkins says. “I accepted so I could see the others. We came together in tragedy, but the feelings they gave me I’ll never forget. “I care for heroes every day. The other rescuers say I’m the hero they couldn’t do without, but they’re heroes because I couldn’t have done without them.”

Human, not a hero

When Mary Evans’ brother died at 34, she was working. “I wasn’t there,” she says. “He needed CPR. Maybe he would’ve lived.”

His death inspired her to become a nurse after 18 years as a school secretary, caring for students who were sent to the office with everything from illness to compound fractures.

Now a clinic nurse at Newton (Miss.) Regional Hospital/Clinic, Evans, an LPN, is close to her extended family. She put work on hold to care for her mother at home for two years while the family coped with Alzheimer’s, and she took responsibility for a toddler.

On Jan. 31, she was awakened by her six-months-pregnant niece who lived next door. Moments later, they were stunned by an explosion. Flames and smoke were pouring from the niece’s home, and four children — ages 2, 3, 5, and 7 — were trapped inside.

The back door was too hot to touch, and so was the front. So Evans, still in just her nightclothes, had her son wet her down with a hose, then broke a window, boosted herself up, and crawled inside. “I couldn’t stay in long because I could feel my skin burning and couldn’t see through the black smoke,” she says. She called to the children, but nobody answered. Although she didn’t know if any lived, she crawled outside, hosed down again, and reentered. This time, feeling her way, she found Katie, who is blind, and carried her to the window. She also saved two other children, one at a time, but couldn’t find Jamien, 5. Evans still mourns the bright, polite boy who publicly recited Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” from memory.

Although the rescued children sustained only scrapes, Evans was cut by glass and her hands, stomach, and hair were burned. “I had to do it, and I’d do it again, not only for them but for anyone else,” she says. “If you’re a true nurse, you want to save lives, and you just help people. I’m not a hero, just human. If I help one person, maybe they’ll help somebody else.”

Always something to do

Laurie Fox, RN, BSN, was driving home from her 12-hour shift as a clinical nurse 2 in Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s same-day program in Lebanon, N.H. It was dusk on October 21, 2003, when a motorcycle helmet struck just above her windshield. Ahead, an oncoming vehicle had struck a motorcycle so hard that the bike’s tire was embedded in its grill. It kept going even as the motorcyclist toppled onto its hood and was slammed onto the middle of the unlit, twisting highway.

Fox swerved around him, pulled over, and raced to his side. “I didn’t want to move him because of possible spinal injuries, but the traffic was bumper to bumper with at least 10 oncoming cars,” she says. “I literally had just seconds to move him. I tried to pull him straight, but he was dead weight, and I threw my back out.”

The victim was moaning, unresponsive, and bleeding profusely. He had an extremely weak pulse and shallow breathing. Fox had a first-aid kit; she used gauze to clear away the blood and a barrier dam to hold down his tongue as she performed CPR while repeating, “Hold on, buddy, hold on.” She kept him alive for 10 minutes until an ambulance arrived.

“I was never involved in a trauma before,” Fox says. “In hospitals, you hit the button and the team comes running. I had that barrier and first-aid kit in three cars for 10 years and never needed it, but I would have helped without it. Blood can happen any day.”

Fox was so covered in blood that she “looked like a murderer,” and a bystander threw away her coat. The next day she was tested for HIV at occupational health.

Although Fox was fine, the motorcyclist sustained severe brain damage, multiple fractures, and internal bleeding. She visited him throughout his hospitalization, and the grateful family visits her monthly during his clinic appointments. “A lot of cars didn’t stop, but there’s always something you can do,” Fox says. “Seeing him recover is such a miracle.”

Fulfilling her destiny

Mary Pennington, RN, RNFA, CNOR, was driving her two children home from school when another vehicle ran a red light and stop sign, smashing the passenger side of her car and spinning it twice. Despite her blaring horn and screeching tires, she told her son, “We’ll be OK.”

Pennington, a registered nurse first assistant at WakeMed in Raleigh, N.C., sustained rib fractures, muscle damage, and severe bruising from her seat belt. Son Hunter had seat belt and air bag bruises and glass cuts, but 11-year-old Caitlin, who took the brunt of the crash, was unconscious, not breathing, her head lying on the seatback.

Pennington, minus a shoe, hurried to Caitlin, but the door wouldn’t open. Leaning through the shattered window, she began rescue breathing. “She had lacerations all over and lost teeth, so I was pulling clots from her mouth while breathing,” Pennington says. “Her neck was unstable, so I held it while leaning through the window and breathing, giving it all I had. The ambulance came in 10 minutes that seemed like forever.”